Last Man Standing
by paratti
Summary: Wes pov on the events of Never Leave Me in BTVS before Rain of Fire. Some Wes/Lilah.


Not mine all belongs to Joss. Set post Never Leave Me in BTVS and pre Rain of Fire in ATS **************************************************************************  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
I don't think I'd ever had so many calls in such a short period of time. I suppose that's what happens when you're the last man standing.  
  
I got the call from Lilah even before that from my Mum. I shouldn't be surprised really, though it doesn't help. I should have known that I'd be last on Mother's list of 'who to call when Father gets blown up'. I probably came last after the dog walker.  
  
I'm not surprised that Lilah knew that the Watchers Council HQ had been blown up after the destruction of the field ops teams. Lilah has her faults, but she runs a large part of Wolfram and Hart who are good at their jobs, which include knowing the status of the opposition. So it was only natural that she'd be one of those to get the 'Watchers Council explodes' memo. I wouldn't have been at all surprised if she'd had something to do with it. It did surprise me that she told me the news so quickly. Normally she likes to take longer to think through what the advantage could be for her.  
  
I'm not sure why she did. It would be easier to know why if she'd done it in person. Sometimes there are things - feelings if you want to call them that - in her eyes that don't match her words. Occasionally, especially in bed, the secure evil bitch shows flickers of the vulnerable girl underneath. I see it when I score in our little game and pain flickers across those perfect features. Sometimes I delude myself that I don't see such things. It makes it easier to live with myself if I do that. Even though it's always pleasurable to hurt Lilah, I despise the fact that I get off on it. But those touches of truth in her eyes rarely get visitation rights in her voice.  
  
I might have known if my 'whatever she is' helped organise my Father's death if she'd told me in person, wiped away my tears, and comforted me in my grief - if I'd had any grief or tears for him, that is. I probably should worry about her possible involvement and my own lack of the approved mode of bereavement expression, I suppose.  
  
But she didn't tell me face to face, she phoned me.  
  
I found out that my beloved father was dead by a call from the evil bitch I'm sleeping with, telling me to turn on the CNN World Report. I got to watch 'the smoking ruins of a London office block - destroyed by 'a gas leak' as the Council's connections persist with the cover stories right to the end. It was reassuring in a strange way. But hearing the 'Initial reports suggest a major loss of life and no survivors' wasn't reassuring at all. CNN showed bodies being taken out in bags. I'll probably never know if one of them was the man that warped my life, and gave it to me. It wasn't a long report; too many losses of life going on in this rotten world of ours for it to be longer. People are strange. I don't understand them, and I'm not sure I really want to try anymore.  
  
My beloved phoned me back to inform me of the death by stabbing of many of my school colleagues. I'd say school friends, but I didn't have any. It seems being a failure and a reject saved my life. Even those out to kill every Watcher out there couldn't be bothered to kill me.  
  
Then I got a call from the Council bankers. The huge banking team covering the Council must have gone through the entire list of active and retired watchers looking for someone to talk to, but only found the dead and the missing, before one of them remembered my miserable existence in the old contact files. They needed to call me anyway about the family trusts, since Father was dead so I inherit everything. That always burned him, but even he couldn't break the entail on the family money. I guess Lilah will be happy about the money - she'll probably want to go out and celebrate, if we survive this coming apocalypse. She doesn't need the money, but she does love winning, whether it's her own victory or reflected ones, and I just beat my opposition. I survived.  
  
She found out pretty fast. She called as soon as I finished the call with the bank.  
  
Every time Father gutted me with his cruelty and his indifference, I promised myself that I'd celebrate my freedom when he died. Now I've a woman that would pay the party planner for the happy day. Why don't I feel happy? I've been promising myself this for years. At times, it had been the only thing that had kept me going.  
  
He's gone. He can't hurt me anymore. He can't give me what I wanted my whole life either now, but I suppose that was always too much to ask.  
  
Maybe it's the other deaths that account for the lack of joy and the bone deep sadness I think I feel. Maybe it's the destruction of centuries of knowledge in that building that accounts for it. People can be replaced, after all, knowledge can't be. Maybe it's the loss of the last glimmer of hope that I might be taken back home that makes me feel this way. Tradition that's built into the blood is hard to deny. But that's the role of the traitor, the Judas, isn't it?  
  
I took the call that shocked me the most last of all.  
  
Buffy Summers called me. Now I knew the world was ending. I must have been her absolute last hope, given the terms on which we parted. She'd somehow managed to lose both Rupert Giles and Spike. I mean, to lose one is understandable; to lose both is just downright careless. She was so desperate to find them that she even resorted to calling me. I really don't know how I was supposed to know where they were. It's not as if Giles and I had parted on good terms. Yes, we've passed on the occasional piece of information to one another over the last few years, but usually via Willow and Cordelia, and my link to Cordelia is pretty much severed. I know who Spike is, but I've never met him, and how I was supposed to know his whereabouts completely escaped me.  
  
Buffy shocked me again by telling me that they all seem to be under attack from the First Evil. Then she astounded me by telling me Spike had won his soul back. I know Angel never told her about the Shanshu prophecy and the End of Days. I told him he should, but he's never been exactly good at taking advice. Buffy told me Spike won his soul back deliberately. I think I'll savour that last piece of news. I know it's petty, and I don't deserve it, but I'm grieving and, after being smothered and used, I think I'm entitled to a frisson of schadenfreude that 'it's not going to be you in the prophecies' towards Angel.  
  
Then Buffy gave the phone to that Anya creature while she ran off to check the school basement of all places. Really! I'm bereaved and I have to listen to Anya interrogate me about what's going on with the Council! And that girl's watched far too much of 'The Shield'. I felt like a drug dealer being 'shaken down' for information by one of LA's 'finest'. It seemed Buffy had called the Council back to find a dead line, and the same at Giles' home. Well, I lacked the energy to tell Anya to 'sod off' so I told her what happened, and that Giles seemed to be missing.  
  
My mobile alerted me to another call, which gave me the perfect excuse to stop talking to Anya. It was Lilah keeping me up to date with the body- count. She's considerate that way. Giles was seen entering a targeted house, and hadn't been seen since. She bet me a buck that he was dead. That was one bet I didn't take up. For some reason that I can't explain, it felt wrong.  
  
If Giles is dead, and I know the bankers would certainly have tried him well ahead of me, and Lilah's news is hardly promising, then it seems as if I'm the last Watcher. Who'd ever have thought I'd be the last man standing? Father would have a fit, but he can't - he's dead. They all are. 


End file.
